Sex robots: Love me or them?
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Currently, there is only one real sex robot you can buy on the market, and her name is Roxxxy, a robot companion. She is designed to be very close to life, 1.7 meters tall, slim, with a range of hairstyles and eye colors to choose from, and different models have different functions, such as listening to you, talking to you, and caressing you. A standout After nearly 10 years of development, Roxxxy's sex robot was first launched in 2010. It comes in different models, including Roxxxy Gold, a sex robot with a "personality", Roxxxy Silver, which can talk to you during sex, and Roxxxy Pillow, the cheapest model, which only has a head and torso, and three "input ports". Unlike other full-size models, Roxxxy Pillow can be stored away in a hidden place when not in use. Roxxxy is undoubtedly a robot, but unlike some female robots and humanoid robots, it does not produce the "uncanny valley" effect, that is, although the robot is very similar to a real person, it is different enough from the real person to make people feel disgusted. Roxxxy is more like a mannequin with a personality. Although she shares her owner's interests, she can be moody and sleepy. She can also load other preset personality traits, such as "Mature Martha," "Young Yoko," or "Aloof Farah." Yoko is just over 18, but she has little experience and is willing to learn; Martha is experienced and can guide her owner. "Wild Wendy" is willing to do everything, while Farah needs more coaxing. But Martha, Yoko, and others provide more than just sexual experience - they are more like real partners who will talk to you before and after sex, or take care of you when you are not in the mood. They are just waiting for you to connect with them. Although the personality provided by Roxxxy is still crude, it is very constructive - at least it gives us a glimpse of the development prospects of sex robots, especially in the context of the increasing maturity of the technology for customizing sex robots. In a few decades, sex robots may be as common as vibrators, so we can start to think about what sex robots mean to human culture. From Stone to Machine Humans have been using sex toys for tens of thousands of years, with the oldest dildos found to date back more than 20,000 years, dating back to the Late Paleolithic period. Today, there are a wide range of sex toys for women and men to choose from, including some smart sex toys. The world's "first wearable smart vibrator" Vibease is controlled by an app that runs on iPhone or Android, and can be worn by one partner in their underwear and controlled remotely by the other partner from anywhere. From these products, sex toys have begun to have similar developments as sex robots, such as FriXion, which use sensors and robotic accessories to assist in remote sex. These robotic sex toys use haptic technology, allowing users to remotely grasp or penetrate their partners through touch rather than verbal control. There are also robots that can mimic human conversations by responding to cues, asking you if you like big breasts and telling you "I feel a little slutty." However, apart from Roxxxy, there are basically no other real sex robots. There are realistic robots - especially in Japan. Project Aiko is perhaps the best known of Japan's humanoid robots. Designed to be the ideal girlfriend or secretary, these robots can talk and respond to human touch. Some even have sensors built into their breasts and private parts for sexual responsiveness, but they're not specifically designed as sex toys, at least not yet. "We're at a turning point in what sex robots mean," says Kyle Machulis, a global sex technology expert from California, USA. "Tracing the history of the term 'sex robot' leads you to a fork in the road, with robots used for sex (the best example being Jude Law's robot Joe in the movie Artificial Intelligence) and people obsessed with pretending to be robots (Clockwork, etc.). There was an intersection between these two groups during the machine fetish era, but from what I've seen, fewer and fewer people are obsessed with the medium or the aesthetic of 'robots', and more and more people are talking about actually having sex with robots." Machines, or "people"? Some newfangled sex tech is different from traditional sex toys in one big way - the former is based on sharing and connection. As personal tools, vibrators can also be shared by couples, but some new sex tech is designed to be shared. In general, the customer base of remote-controlled dildos and sex robots is couples or men, and there are few products that are specifically targeted at the female market, which means that we are creating and observing sex tech from the perspective of heterosexual men. Many emerging trends in sex tech are focused on men. Roxxxy was originally created to recreate a friend who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but she developed into a sex robot used to please her owner. Some people think this form of slavery is not offensive because artificial intelligence is still far from real people. But what if we think of sex tech and sex robots as part of a "shared experience"? What if we can program these sex robots so that they are not just objects to be controlled or handed around like animals, but beings to share intimacy with people? Sex toys were born under the shadow of female hysteria, sexual dysfunction and shame, so do sex robots have to come out with their own stigma? Perhaps the most famous work on intimacy with robots comes from David Levy, a British writer, chess master and CEO of Intelligent Toys Ltd. Most of the discussion on the ethics of robot sex is concentrated in an article titled "The Ethics of Robot Prostitution" in his 2001 book "Robot Ethics". In the article, he divides sex robots into different types according to their complexity. Levy believes that as long as sex robots are products without "artificial consciousness", having sex with robots or using them for sex transactions does not involve ethical issues. However, Levy points out that once robots gain artificial consciousness, there will be legal and ethical issues, and these issues will not only involve humans, but also the robots themselves. However, even if sex robots are not conscious at present, they do have human external characteristics, and people try to make them similar to real people when programming them. In fact, people have a template in mind when they create them: a type of woman that can be owned and controlled by heterosexual men. Stills from "My Girlfriend is a Robot". When OOXX robots become the new gender role, will the "girlfriend" of heterosexual men change from "she" to "it"? If women are the prototypes of most OOXX robots, then we are risking reshaping already deeply rooted gender roles, especially in terms of sex. If that's the case, it's too bad. Whether for men or women, sex technology has the potential to alleviate long-standing problems in humans. It can help us deal with sexual dysfunction and deep-seated loneliness, but if we only create a new group of second-class citizens, a group of sexual creatures for people to possess, then we will once again alienate each other further. As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity. |
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